The Best Spa Software for Small Business
Whether it be online appointment scheduling software, spa management software, or a POS system, there are a lot of apps that spas small and large need to run efficiently.
However, this isn’t a unique problem for spa businesses and spa owners; many small businesses struggle to juggle software and manage resources so their businesses can thrive.
In contrast to what I just said, I’d be lying if I said spas didn’t have unique needs. Aesthetic or functional, spas and other appointment-based businesses have different requirements when it comes to business management software and point-of-sale software.
Luckily, there’s a host of spa management software that has cropped up to help with those unique needs.
First things first, though…
What should you look for in spa management software?
Spa software is software that is designed to streamline and/or automate operational tasks and processes specifically in a spa environment and can provide a comprehensive set of tools and features, listed below:
- Appointment scheduling: Arguably the most important function of any spa management software, the ability to schedule appointments online is what brings business to a spa facility, or any facility for that matter. Appointment management includes online booking, calendar sync, personalized booking pages, and more.
- Customer management: Once you have a client booked, the next step is to get to know them better by using collected data. Once you have this data, you can retain clients by utilizing it to get to know your client better. Customer management in spa software includes access to this data (e.g. birthday, insurance provider, ID, etc.) and some ability to segment clients for easier management.
- Payment processing: Similarly to appointment scheduling, if you can’t accept payments from the people who are scheduling appointments, then you won’t be able to run a successful spa (or at least make doing so more complicated than it needs to be). Payment processing tends to include integrations with platforms like PayPal or Stripe and the ability to charge your client either during the booking process or when clients come to the spa.
- Employee management: In order to get bookings, you have to have employees with time to be booked. Employee management in spa management software generally includes advertising your employee performance and availability, so you can get more bookings at your spa.
- Inventory management: On the back end now, occasionally a spa software solution will include inventory management as a part of their platform. This typically includes tracking and managing inventory levels of products and facilitating the reordering of any products in need of resupply.
This isn’t a comprehensive list, and there are more possible tools you could get with your spa management software. However, these are some of the most standard tools included with any spa management software, small business or otherwise.
Now, without further ado, here is the top spa software for small businesses.
Here is our shortlist of the top spa software for small businesses:
- Simplybook.me
- Fresha
- Acuity Scheduling
- Vagaro
SimplyBook.me
SimplyBook.me is an all-in-one solution made for service-based businesses, no matter the service. Designed for mobile optimization, SimplyBook makes sure that, wherever you or your clients are, the scheduling process is as simple and hassle-free as possible, being able to set up recurring appointments and get appointment reminders from their mobile devices.
Just define your services and providers, display their availability, and you will have a complete setup for your online bookings.
Simplybook ensures that the booking process will be as smooth as possible for maximum customer satisfaction. With a custom-built booking page, you can represent your brand as professionally as possible while filling out your appointment book.
Features
Online Booking
The most obvious feature of SimplyBook is its ability to handle online bookings, which makes getting new clients, retaining existing clients, and preventing no-shows/double bookings incredibly simple. Clients can book appointments through multiple channels, like your spa’s website, Facebook, Instagram, or Google Business profile.
Business & Client Management
With SimplyBook users can monitor site visits and total bookings, making a conversion comparison rate to give users a better idea of how their website is performing. If you’re more tech-savvy, you can also connect Google Tag Manager for this same purpose.
Additionally, SimplyBook can be used to manage employee schedules, break times, vacation times, and service allocations. You can grant certain employees levels of admin access, depending on what changes you want to have them make within the system. You can also manage limited resources like rooms on the platform.
Booking Website
To make getting bookings even simpler, SimplyBook allows users to choose from over 20 templates for a booking website, then customize it to represent your business with color schemes or other features that you can change without any code.
On top of that, you can create a booking widget for your main website that pops up on the side of visitors’ screens when they visit your website.
Pricing: SimplyBook.me has a free version that includes 50 bookings, 1 custom feature, 1 user, an admin app, a booking website, and a booking widget. From there, their plans start at $9.90/mo, including more bookings, more custom features, more users, a client app, point of sale support, and more; you can take these paid features for a spin with Simplybook’s 14-day free trial as well.
Note: these prices are monthly, and if you choose to pay annually, you can get 17% off on all of SimplyBook’s plans.
Fresha
When it comes to a spa business, Fresha is the most obvious choice for spa management software. They cover pretty much everything beauty, from salon management to spa software. As the top-rated spa management software in the beauty/wellness industry and partnered with over 80,000 businesses, it’s clear that Fresha is universally beloved by its users, whether they be contractors or clients.
Plus, it’s free; unlimited appointment bookings, clients, email notifications, team members, and more make Fresha incredibly appealing for start-ups and small spa businesses with tight budgets.
Features
Payment Processing & POS System
One of Fresha’s biggest draws is its pay-as-you-go system, and its payment/point-of-sale solution further exemplifies that. Clients can pay via link, saved card, and Fresha card terminals, and Fresha will only take 2.19% + $0.20 on each transaction. The image above is the Fresha S1, which accepts credit cards, debit cards, and gift cards, supports contactless payments, has a wireless connection, and has a built-in printer.
Additionally, businesses can protect their bottom lines from no-shows or last-minute-cancels by charging no-show fees.
Automated Marketing
Fresha isn’t just spa management software; it also has email marketing or text marketing capabilities built into the platform. Businesses can target client groups using filtering tools to make sure they can reach their most loyal clients and top spenders, along with retargeting lapsed clients and more.
Business Support
Not only does Fresha provide a simple platform for spa business management, they also have an extensive backlog on how to run your business using their platform. From getting started to running your business with Fresha, their Help Centre has extensive documentation and likely has an answer for every problem a user might encounter.
Pricing: As I said earlier,Fresha’s app is entirely free, but there are optional paid features that you can buy into. First, payment processing will run users 2.19% + $0.20 per transaction online or in-store.
Next, if you advertise your business on Fresha’s directory, Fresha will take a one-time fee of 20% on new customers.
Third, you get 50 free monthly texts for automated appointment notifications and are charged $0.01 for every extra text past that.
Lastly, for blast marketing and promotional texts/emails, you’ll pay $0.06 per text and $0.02 per email.
Acuity Scheduling
While not an all-in-one tool like the two previous tools, Acuity Scheduling is a powerful scheduling software solution designed solely for meeting and appointment management. Thus, Acuity is used both for internal scheduling (like meetings) and external scheduling (like appointments).
Acuity, as a Squarespace product, also makes website integration very simple if you’ve built your website on Squarespace as opposed to WordPress or Wix. You can add a calendar management tool to your website, allowing visitors to check your availability and make bookings accordingly.
On top of that, Acuity Scheduling is HIPAA compliant, which is very important for any spa management software as health information could be processed as a part of the service.
Features
Client Management
As client and appointment management go, Acuity might be the best on the market. As mentioned above users can share their calendar through several venues such as Facebook, Instagram, email or your website. Generally, wherever your business has a presence, you can share your calendar and availability.
Additionally, you can customize everything about the tool to match your brand experience, making clients feel like your scheduling solution is unique and building your brand reputation. This may require some CSS knowledge, but it can be done nonetheless.
Payment Processing
With integrations like Stripe, Square, and PayPal, Acuity users can process payments just as any spa business should be able to, with ease and speed.
On top of that, users can offer appointment packages (including payment plans) to give customers a more personalized experience with your wellness business.
Squarespace “Integration”
As Acuity Scheduling was acquired by Squarespace in 2019, integrating your scheduler into a website built on Squarespace (if you have one) is as simple as can be. Once you’ve connected your Squarespace website with Acuity’s scheduler, managing online appointments is made trivial simply because you’re basically using one platform for your website and scheduler.
Pricing: Unfortunately, Acuity doesn’t offer a freemium plan, but they do allow you to test drive the platform with their 7-day free trial. As for their paid plans, they start at $20/mo, including standard scheduling tools plus unlimited services and appointments, confirmation reminders, and the ability to embed your scheduler into your website.
Vagaro
Used by over 174,000 professionals, Vagaro is another all-in-one spa management software solution, but it isn’t limited to spas. Salon owners and other beauty fields could also find use in Vagaro’s robust feature suite.
Beauty professionals of all kinds can take advantage of Vagaro’s pay-as-you-need pricing structure, so they’re never paying for features they don’t need. Because of this, users have complete control of all aspects of their business, from managing employees to client management to email marketing.
Features
Vagaro Marketplace
The first step to getting bookings is being discovered in the first place. To help with this, on top of being spa management and marketing software, Vagaro also offers its users access to the Vagaro marketplace for free, meaning you don’t have to pay to be on the marketplace and you don’t have to pay any booking fees.
You can also promote yourself on this marketplace with daily deals, loyalty programs, and visible reviews, which can all draw more customers to your business and result in more profit.
Overall, Vagaro boasts a staggering $75,000 in new customer revenue based on an average of 13 new repeat customers per month at $100 per appointment with a 75% retention rate. Even if this statistic Vagaro offers doesn’t accurately represent how you might benefit, it’s nearly guaranteed that you’ll gain multiple clients just by virtue of being on the marketplace.
Branded Mobile App
Another of Vagaro’s big draws is the ability to create and customize your own mobile app, so service providers and customers can access and manage scheduling from anywhere on both iOS and Android.
Additionally, the app works both on and off-line; no wifi required.
With a mobile app, users can automate check-ins and eliminate the need for front desk staff by letting clients check themselves in whenever they’re scheduled for, and they can fill out waivers and intake forms directly from the app.
Inventory Management
As I mentioned in the “what should I look for in spa management software” section, a few of the top spa software options allows users to track inventory down to individual items, and Vagaro is one of those few.
Vagaro can import your entire inventory for you at no extra charge from any other piece of software, and users can set smart purchase orders when an item is low on stock and add new inventory items if users decide to expand.
Pricing: Vagaro’s pricing structure is incredibly customizable, allowing users to pay only for what they need. Their primary payment system is governed by the amount of bookable calendars you want, starting at $25/mo for one bookable calendar and up to $85/mo for seven or more bookable calendars.
There is also a plethora of add-on features, from payment processing to targeted marketing. These features help to flesh out Vagaro as a spa management software, and allows users to pick and choose what features they need instead of paying for features they won’t use. Here is their add-on pricing page below:
Griffin is an up-and-coming writer interested in business, software, and business software; feel free to connect through email, Facebook, or Linkedin.
